TechKnack

An Alternative to IE8’s "Opt-in Standards Mode"?

February 11th, 2008 under standards, web, windows

There’s been a lot of opinions expressed about the IE team’s introduction of the X-UA-Compatible HTTP header (or, in most cases, a meta tag in the html), otherwise known as Opt-in Standards Mode, with IE8. Most of the opinionators seem to be opposed to the “switch”, while a few (PPK of QuirksMode and Aaron Gustafson of AListApart amongst them) have already embraced it. But is there a better way?

Ideas

Reading through user comments on PPK’s post, I came across some interesting ideas. BARTdG said

…I think they should solve this problem by adding a “Does this site look odd?”-button (to switch IE8 into IE7-mode)…

And Michiel van der Blonk said

I see a different scenario possible. MS ships the new IE8 with full forward compatibility mode (edge) as a default, as all standards aware developers expect it.

But, they also deploy a ‘crippled’ version of IE8 that has all the security features and what not but will render using the IE6 engine.

Tino Zijdel:

If the problem lies mainly with IE-centered intranet apps then why doesn’t MS offer a special fabriqued ‘Intranet Explorer’?

An alternative?

What if standards-compliant rendering were placed in the hands of the users?

I mean, this is pretty much the case now, what with people having a choice (most of the time) between using IE6, IE7, FireFox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, and more. Those ignorant of their options will use what they’re given, IE7 (or IE8 with the default mode). Why not leave whether or not IE8 renders properly as an option for the user to invoke?